FERTILE GROUNDS: A survey of New Media Art in the Bay Area March 29, 2006

March 29 ? April 29, 2006
Opening Reception Wednesday, March 29, 6-10P

?Fertile Grounds?
JIM CAMPBELL, JIM HAYNES, JEFF HOEFS & PETER CHESTER, KRISTIN LUCAS, HENDRIK LEPER & STIJN SCHIFFELEERS, SEAN TALLEY, MARY ELIZABETH YARBROUGH



Fertile Grounds is a survey of current New Media work in San Francisco by Bay Area artists. The exhibition examines a diverse cross-section of practices and themes at the forefront of San Francisco's pioneering artistic community. Included works are from both established and emerging artists who find themselves immersed in a diverse mixture of cultural factors; a mixture uniquely conducive to New Media Art.

Defined by a half-century of activism and counterculture, San Francisco exists within the American social and political landscape as an autonomous zone. It is a place where lifestyle is reinvented with an emphasis on personal freedom and cultural cognizance. Alternately, San Francisco is known for its denizen's accelerated relationship with technology. A product of its proximity to Silicon Valley, the city is a playground for new technologies. A place where technology is applied to human problems and integrated into increasingly digital lifestyles.

The exhibited artists in Fertile Grounds combine and manipulate technologies into synthetic mediums, rendering phenomena that are dynamic and multi-modal. These artists are functioning in a mode approaching the pre-Renaissance ideal of the natural-philosopher, a mode epitomized by the re-unification of artistic and scientific roles. They continue a tradition of multi-disciplinary thought and they create the next step in the art world?s continuing evolution.